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Len Webster

1948-

Profile

The novelist, Len Webster, has provided the following biography especially for this website:-

Len Webster was born in Birmingham and brought up in Smethwick, where he attended Holly Lodge Grammar School for Boys. He worked as a journalist locally before taking degrees in English. Subsequently, he worked overseas, including a long period in South-East Asia, where some of his stories are set.

Len Webster A short poetry collection, Behind the painted veil, appeared in 1972 and after writing a number of short stories, he wrote a novel called The turban-wallah: a tale of Little India (1984), set in 1981 against the background of unemployment and racial tensions in a Midlands town. While he was working as a lecturer in Singapore, he was a finalist in the Asiaweek Short Story competition and subsequently Times Books International published his novel Beneath the blue moon (1992) and a short story collection, Hell-riders (1994). Though these two books are centred largely on South-East Asia, readers will recognise a strong West Midlands influence in them, particularly in Memoirs in the form of two short stories.

The Midlands, in particular Birmingham, Smethwick and the Black Country, are strong features in the work of a writer who spent many years living and working abroad. More recently, a 1971 interview with Cheshire-born Christopher Isherwood has been published as part of a collection, Conversations with Christopher Isherwood, edited by James J. Berg and Chris Freeman (University Press of Mississippi, 2001).

Works

Selected books by the author

The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-

Behind the painted veil (1972)
The turban-wallah: a tale of Little India (1984)
Beneath the blue moon (1992)
Hell-riders and other stories (1994)
Poems

E-texts

You may read online here extracts from some of the work of Len Webster:-

Hell-riders and other stories (1994)
The turban-wallah: a tale of Little India (1984)

Page created 30 January 2002 and last updated 15 August 2003
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